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i. a different beginning
Haruko calls her out to an eerily empty street in Setagaya, where she presses an all-too-familiar-looking briefcase into her hands. Mari stares down at it for a moment before blinking at her in confusion.
“I think it’s best if you have it,” she says, and Mari raises an eyebrow.
“‘You’ think? So the others…?”
“They don’t know I’m here. I told them I was meeting up with someone else from Ryuusei. By now… they’ve probably noticed it’s missing.” As if on cue, the cellphone clenched in her fist lights up with an incoming call, and her eyes darken behind her glasses. “I have some lies planned out. Hopefully they’ll last long enough for you to find someone who can actually use it. I mean… You already found one, right? That friend of yours? Clearly you’ve got better luck than the rest of us.” She laughs, though there’s something tired and forced about it.
Mari frowns; shakes her head. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this behind their backs? This doesn’t feel right – ”
“Please, Mari,” Haruko says, with desperation colouring her voice. “This belt… I swear it does something to them. It’s like it makes them want to throw their lives away. And I’m just so – ” Her voice breaks, then, and she looks away, taking a shaky breath. “I’m so tired of watching them die. Please.”
Mari’s grip tightens around the briefcase, remembering the way Shindo and Inukai had crumbled into dust right before her eyes. And Nishida, too, gone before she could even see him again. Her memories of the reunion are little more than a jumble of broken, fragmented images. What had Nishida’s face even looked like? A blurry cell phone photo doesn’t tell her much. How much had he changed since they were kids?
She wishes she knew.
“Alright,” she says, and wonders, not for the first time, if this was all some terrible miscalculation. Maybe none of them from Ryuusei were ever meant to have these belts.
(Maybe Father, in all his wisdom, has finally made a mistake.)
She’s nearing home, the belt briefcase strapped to her bike, when she turns down a backstreet to find an Orphenoch attack in progress. A lone girl, backed up against a wall by the approaching monster, its weapon – a thin, elegant sword – held high and ready to strike. Without thinking, Mari twists hard on the throttle, veering in between the two with enough speed to take the Orphenoch by surprise. It stumbles back as Mari screeches the bike to a halt, motioning urgently towards the girl.
“C’mon, get on,” she all but shouts, and the girl nods, wide-eyed and startled, hurrying to do as instructed. She wraps her arms tightly around Mari’s waist as they peel away.
“Can you get my phone out of my pocket and call the first number on speed dial?” Mari says over her shoulder. She can hear a faint, confused “okay” in response. “Tell him there’s an Orphenoch near 4-10 in Meguro. He’ll know what you mean.”
No sooner has the girl made the call than a figure – its shape decidedly inhuman – steps out from an open doorway, blocking the street ahead of them. A vicious-looking spiked whip is twined through its fingers.
“Make that two Orphenochs,” Mari says, cursing under her breath, and pulls the bike up short. She glances back to find the first creature advancing on them slowly, its steps confident and deliberate.
So they’re trapped, then. In the few minutes it’ll take for Takumi to get here, they’ll most likely be slaughtered where they stand.
Which leaves only one option.
Mari hops off the bike – her passenger hurriedly does the same – and grabs the belt briefcase, propping it open on the seat.
“W-what is that?” the girl asks.
“Something that can fight those things,” Mari answers, and reaches out to take hold of the Kaixa gear.
… Or tries to, at least. Her hand hovers just above the belt, trembling with what she suddenly realizes is fear. She swallows hard. Worst case scenario, the Kaixa gear rejects her just like the Faiz gear did. Best case scenario… what? Transforming once and then dying a meaningless death just like her classmates? That hardly seems preferable. And it’s not like she can ask this stranger to try it – this girl who looks about the same age as her, maybe even younger, with a sweet kind of innocence about her face. Mari’s not about to just hand her a death sentence.
Die now or die later. Those seem to be her choices, and the hesitation keeps her trapped there as the seconds tick by, pulse pounding out a quick and relentless rhythm in her ears.
But she hesitates too long. A hand – its flesh cool and smooth like a marble statue come to life – closes around her wrist, yanking her backwards. She’s spun around, face-to-face with the Orphenoch, and that same hand clamps like a vice around her neck.
“Yuka-chan and I were in the middle of a chat,” it says, in a low, velvety woman’s voice that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “It was very rude of you to get in the way. You humans really have no manners, do you?”
It looks past her, then, focusing on the belt briefcase.
“Hmm? Now where did you get that?” it asks, and turns back to Mari, loosening its grip enough that she can breathe a bit, her panicked lightheadedness lessening. “Don’t tell me you’re one of the former president’s brats.” It laughs softly. “Oh, that is a fun coincidence. Your father has given us a lot of trouble, you know. I wonder if Murakami-kun might find some use for you? Maybe…”
Mari can see, out of the corner of her eye, the girl reaching out to take the Kaixa gear. Can see her putting the belt on as quickly and quietly as she can despite her shaking hands. Can see her hesitate, unsure, as she flips the phone open.
What do I do? she mouths silently, and though her eyes are wide and scared there’s a hard, flinty edge of determination there, too.
Mari claws with all her strength at the hand around her throat, and in the creature’s surprise its grip loosens further, just enough for her to be able to whisper: “Nine one three.”
There is a flash of bright yellow light.
ii. a different middle
“I’m sorry, Mari-chan.”
Keitarou’s voice is small and dejected, and she can feel him slump a little lower, his wrists gone limp where they’re bound against her own.
“This is all my fault… If I hadn’t been so slow…”
Mari sighs. “C’mon, what’re you saying? You stopped to help that girl who was being attacked, right? Obviously it’s not your fault.”
She stretches out her leg a little more, biting her lip in concentration, trying to maneuver the piece of broken glass on the floor towards herself. If she can just get it within reach, she can maybe use it to cut the ropes, and then –
The heel of a shoe comes down on the shard of glass, slow and deliberate, grinding it into crumbling pieces.
“Hmm?” a sleepy voice says. The Lucky Clover asshole – Kitazaki? yeah, that’s his name – crouches down next to her, tilting his head to the side and staring at her from beneath his unruly fringe of curly hair. “Are you trying to get away? That’s not gonna work, you know.” He sits back on his heels, wrapping his arms around his knees like a child might. “You could at least try something more interesting. This is all so boringgg.” He draws that last syllable out and follows it with a petulant sigh. “Saeko-san said I’d get to have fun if I guarded the hostages, but this isn’t fun at all.”
He picks up a smooth stone off the warehouse floor and turns it over in his hand, and Mari watches, wary, as it slowly turns to ash and sifts through his fingers. He raises an eyebrow at her.
“Maybe I’ll just get rid of you,” he says, reaching out his hand towards her, and she shrinks back against Keitarou despite herself. (Keitarou offers up a trembling-but-defiant “leave her alone,” but Kitazaki doesn’t even seem to hear.) “Since nothing interesting is happening. It could be a fun game, don’t you think? Seeing how long you last.”
His fingertips are barely an inch away from her skin when a voice – quiet, but amplified by their surroundings – says “stop it.”
They all turn to look at the entranceway.
Yuka doesn’t usually strike a particularly imposing figure, but there’s something about her in this moment – backlit by the late afternoon light, fists clenched tight at her side, one hand gripping the belt – that gives Mari pause.
“O-Osada-san!” Keitarou exclaims, relief evident, but she can tell that he’s a bit taken aback as well.
“Let them go,” Yuka says, and begins to take a few steps closer.
“Ohh?” Kitazaki gets to his feet slowly, an uncanny smile spreading across his face. “You’re Kaixa, aren’t you? Saeko-san told me aaaaall about you. About what you are. About the bad things you did.”
Yuka freezes in place. All of her bravado seems to vanish in an instant, then, replaced by something like visceral fear.
“What are you talking about?” she whispers.
“Oh, don’t be like that. Wouldn’t it be fun if I told your friends? We could see how they react! We could see how long it takes them to hate you.”
“Don’t,” Yuka chokes out.
“Don’t?” Kitazaki tilts his head to the side. “You mean… I shouldn’t tell them that you’re an Orphenoch just like me?”
There is silence for a moment, and then Keitarou laughs, sharp with disbelief, the sound cutting through the otherwise quiet warehouse. “That’s – that’s ridiculous. Osada-san fights against Orphenochs just like Takkun does. So obviously that’s a lie. Right, Mari?”
“Right,” Mari mumbles, more out of reflex than anything, her attention focused on Yuka’s stricken face.
“But you’re not just an Orphenoch, are you?” Kitazaki says. His smile broadens. “You really are just like me. All those innocent humans you murdered. Saeko-san told me all about the ones on the basketball team. And the two in the park. And the three by the – ”
“Stop,” Yuka pleads, cutting him off. The Kaixa belt clatters to the floor as she claps her hands over her ears.
In the silence that follows, Keitarou laughs again, but it’s weak this time, nervous and wavering. “That’s not – ” he whispers. “That’s not possible.”
But Mari isn’t so sure. There have been times, those hectic in-between moments before a fight, when she has looked over at Yuka’s face and seen something there. A shadow. The flicker of something else, something secret, another self kept carefully locked away. And what do any of them really know about her, in the end? This girl who constantly apologizes for things that aren’t her fault, who seems to wither away whenever the topic of family comes up, who is sharply intelligent but does not attend school, who lives in a strange, expensive-looking apartment with two people she is clearly not related to.
Maybe, subconsciously, Mari has known all along. That there is something different about this person, something dangerous and strange.
And yet.
“Yuka!” she shouts. “You’re Kaixa now, aren’t you?”
There’s enough raw power behind her voice that Yuka seems to hear her, lifting her hands from her ears and glancing up to meet her eyes from across the warehouse.
“You’re Kaixa, so... So nothing else matters, right? Even if you,” and here Mari swallows hard, her mouth gone dry, “even if you did something awful before, you’re a hero now, aren’t you? So you can’t just give up.”
Yuka takes a visible breath, hands trembling a bit as she looks down at them, staring at her upturned palms like she can see everything she’s ever done written there. For a time she remains frozen in place this way, and Mari observes her with bated breath, tension prickling like electricity across her skin.
Slowly, Yuka bends down to pick up the Kaixa belt once more.
“Whaaaat?” Kitazaki drawls. “You still wanna fight?”
But in this moment Yuka seems to pay him no mind, looking straight past him to where Mari and Keitarou are watching her.
“… You know, I – ” Yuka says softly, voice breaking, but she draws herself up and soldiers on despite. “I used to be so scared of humans. I still am, sometimes. I don’t understand how they can be so cruel to each other. But maybe I… Maybe I just had bad luck, you know? Maybe I was cursed or something.” Her smile is weak and sad. “Because all the humans I’ve met since I got this belt have been different. Kikuchi-san, Inui-san, Kimura-san… Sonoda-san. You’ve all been so kind to me.
“Everything he said was true,” she continues, her smile slipping away. “And some of it I – I don’t regret, even though I know I should. But I’m different, now. I can see that there are good people in the world, good humans, and I…”
The belt snaps into place around her waist. She takes the phone in hand and flips it open, punching in the code, and as she sets it into the belt that programmed voice – standing by – reverberates through the still air of the warehouse.
“… will do my best to protect them!”
Kitazaki hasn’t even transformed when the first punch lands.
iii. a different end
The evolution of the Orphenoch was too quick, too sudden. Or so her father told Kiba. Their once-human bodies cannot tolerate it. They are all doomed – destined to die again (and stay dead this time) due to this tragic, fatal flaw.
Father says that this is their fate.
Mari says that’s bullshit.
She slams her hands on the table as she says it, and everyone turns to look at her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“You’re not just going to accept that, are you?” she says heatedly. “Father, he – he doesn’t know everything. Just because he says it’s fate doesn’t mean you can’t change it.”
“I agree,” adds Saya, who as usual is calm and composed, her hands folded neatly on the tabletop. “Nothing is ever as set in stone as you might think. If I managed to survive Delta’s influence then the Orphenochs can survive this.”
“But… what can we do?” Keitarou asks, glancing back and forth anxiously between the two sides of the table. “None of us are doctors or scientists or – or anything like that.”
For a moment they all lapse into apprehensive silence, until Takumi turns to Kiba.
“You have a plan,” he says. Not so much a question as a statement of fact.
Kiba nods slowly. “Sonoda-san, your father made me an offer. He wants to take down Murakami and appoint me as acting president of Smart Brain in his place.”
At that, Mari sits up a little straighter in her seat.
“Your father seems worried about something called the ‘Orphenoch King,’” Kiba says, mouth curving into a thoughtful frown. “I can’t say I know much about it myself, but… If that’s what Lucky Clover is after, then it’s probably bad news. And it seems to have something to do with Teruo-kun.” His gaze travels over to the sofa, where Teruo is sleeping soundly. “So I think going along with what your father wants might be the right thing to do in this case. And more importantly it would give me access to all of Smart Brain’s technology.
“If they can bring back the dead,” he continues, “if they can create Orphenochs in the first place, then there must be something in their labs that could cure us. Don’t you think?”
He glances around the table searchingly. His voice had been confident, but there’s a hint of desperation in his expression all the same.
“I think so, too,” Yuka says, speaking up for the first time since this discussion began. At first she’d seemed shaken – hands trembling as Kiba laid out the possibility of their imminent deaths – but she’d gotten that keen look in her eye soon after. The look of someone who’s carefully piecing together a puzzle. “You’ll need us to keep Lucky Clover occupied… Is that right?”
“Right,” Kiba says. “Murakami at least could be a problem. Keeping their attention somewhere else – away from Teruo especially – will make things a little easier. I know I can count on you three,” he smiles at Takumi, Saya, and Yuka in turn, “and hopefully someone else, too.”
When he receives no reply, he sighs and turns around in his chair. “Kaidou.”
Kaidou glances up, caught in the middle of helping himself to a selection of leftovers from their fridge. “Whaaaat?” he whines. “Kiba, man, I told you a hundred times! I’m a public hero now. My name was in the headlines! Obviously I’m gonna help with,” he makes a nebulous, wave-y hand gesture, “that thing you said.”
“… Right,” Kiba sighs, and turns back to the rest of them looking somewhat apologetic. “I don’t think he’s really processed the whole ‘we’re all dying’ thing yet.”
“If we’re lucky he won’t have to,” Takumi mutters, and it might be the single most sentimental thing Mari has ever heard him say.
Later, as she and Yuka help Keitarou with the dishes, Mari nudges her affectionately with her elbow and says:
“Soon you won’t have to fight anymore. That’s pretty exciting, right?”
Yuka smiles faintly. “I guess so. I mean… I don’t really mind it so much. Fighting. It's easy, in a way. And it’s kind of nice to,” and here she ducks her head, scrubbing intently at a bowl, “to feel needed like that.”
Mari thinks of Takumi, then – of that time months ago when he gave up the Faiz belt and sank into a bizarre kind of depression. Maybe some part of him will feel strange and hollow too, when he hangs up the Faiz gear and returns to a (mostly) normal existence.
“You have to have something else you want to do, though, don’t you?” She tilts her head to the side. “A dream, maybe?”
Yuka’s laugh is vague and noncommittal. “No, no, I… I never really thought about things like that.”
“Oh, but Osada-san,” Keitarou says, leaning over the sink to peer at her, up to his elbows in bubbles, “you told me your dream, once. In a mail you sent. You said you wanted to go to a beautiful place, where ‘the sea is clear as glass.’ And where everyone is kind to one another.”
Mari watches, amused, as the tips of Yuka’s ears gradually turn a vivid pink. “You – you remember that?”
“Yeah!” Keitarou beams at her. “I thought it was a really amazing dream… You think so too, right Mari-chan?”
Mari nods, ‘hmm’ing thoughtfully. “We should go there,” she says. “Once everything’s finished, I mean. We should find a place like that and take a vacation. I don’t think Takumi likes beaches much, but we’ll drag him along if we have to.”
There is a moment of quiet, in which the only sound that can be heard is Kaidou’s muffled voice from the next room over.
“… That sounds nice,” Yuka says finally, with a cautious kind of hopefulness, and their fingers brush as she hands Mari another plate to rinse.
iv.
The water here looks nothing like glass, but Yuka smiles all the same, shading her eyes from the sun, and assures them that it will do.